Voyeuristic tendencies…

As a kid in Western Maryland, I was no stranger to a heavy duty snowfall. In the winter of 1996 I seem to vaguely remember a storm dropped around three feet of the stuff that closed schools for a week and let me drive my 4-wheeler all over town for shits and grins. What I don’t remember is any television station shifting to wall-to-wall coverage of frozen precipitation falling from the skies for the duration of the storm. Which leads me to wonder, in my most curmudgeonly way, is that a new thing that they’re doing? We barely had CNN back then when dinosaurs roamed the earth. And honestly, I think widely available cable television had only been ‘down the Crick’ for less than a decade. Maybe they did cover it and I was too busy playing in the snow to notice it, but I have a sneaking suspicion that we just didn’t make such a big deal out of it.

It’s snowing. We know more or less when it’s going to end. When it does, there will be plows and shoveling and life will get back to some semblance of normal in about 24 hours. I’m not sure what else you really need to know when you can look out your window and be at least as well informed as the local weather guy. I guess I’m just missing the part where it’s really a national Big Deal. Unless it’s about driving up ratings by appealing to America’s insatiable voyeuristic tendencies. In that case, I understand completely.